Night at the Archives with the Girl Scouts of Northeast Ohio

To celebrate Archives month and the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts USA, the CHP hosted a “Night at the Archives” for 27 fourth- and fifth-grade Girl Scouts, all of whom earned a Playing the Past program badge. The girls visited five different stations, learning about the history of women in psychology, the psychology of facial expressions, handwriting and personality, form boards as tests of intelligence, the history of Girl Scouts, and Rorschachs and the game of Gobolinks. In this blog entry, Girl Scout Molly Bagatto (aged 10), describes her night at the Archives.

My Girl Scout troop went to the archives for an event called Night at the Archives! We earned our Playing the Past badge and learned about history, games, books, and other things that had to do with women and girls. I learned so much about how similar I am to strong women of the past who fought for education and programs for girls!

At station 1 we learned about 3 women. My favorite was Mary Whiton Calkins. I learned that she was told by a man that men were smarter than women at the type of research they were doing. The man had nothing to prove. Then Mary did some research and found out that men aren’t smarter. Since she did research, she could prove it.

At station 2 we learned about facial expressions. We played a very old game with expressions. The game was pictures of women with different expressions. We had to guess the expressions. We then played another game that was newer. There was an expression on a card. Then a person had to act out that expression and everyone had to guess what expression it was. After that we had some fake wood people with heads that turn in different spots. We had to match the parts to make an expression.

Girls learned about facial expressions by interacting with this “How Easy is it to Read a Face?” display.

At station 3 we learned about behavior back then. We wrote a sentence on a sheet of paper in cursive. We then put it up to a chart and see what matched our handwriting. When you found the ones that matched there were adjectives under it. Back then they used this chart to see how you acted, but it still described me perfectly! Then we played an old game where we had to put shapes in the right slots. This game was used for testing how good you were with shapes and how good you were with your hands.

Girls used a 1939 Handwriting Scale to assess their personalities using handwriting.

At station 4 we learned about Lou Henry Hoover. We learned that she served as president of Girl Scouts in 1922-1925. Before she even was the president of GS in 1921 she was the vice president of Girl Scouts. In 1929-1933 she served as honorary president of GS. Much, much later in 1944 she died in New York.

Lizette reads a letter from Lou Henry Hoover, pulled from the CHP collections.

At station 5 we learned about ink blots and poetry. First we did ink blots. We squirted some black paint in random spots on a sheet of paper. Then we folded it in half. We pressed it so the paint would spread out to make a picture. We then opened it up and tried to find a picture out of it. Then we made a poem about it.

Molly’s ink blot. The poem she wrote based on it:“The elephant just sits there, mocking me.It gets fed so much that I can’t bear!Let’s hope I leave the zoo so we can seeIf this elephant mocks you!”

I would like to give special thanks to the nice and talented women who taught us. Thanks to Shelley, Jodi, Lizette, Sara, and Dorothy I earned my Playing the Past badge.

The CHP would like to give special thanks to Molly for being our guest-blogger! We hope to see Molly and the Northeast Ohio Girl Scouts again soon.